Trump, the Anti-Constitutional Authoritarian — Liberty Lovers, Beware

For seven years now, President Obama’s opponents have shouted righteously outside the White House. This president, they have argued, does not care about the law; his Democratic party, they have charged, has adopted a “will to power” approach to politics; and the media . . . well, the media has been complicit in the ruse.

From my perspective, this development has been a salutary one. A free people should be reflexively distrustful of those who hold power, and they should be wedded to the idea that the law serves as the best bulwark against caprice. Human liberty is protected most effectively when its beneficiaries learn to separate their preferred outcomes from their preferred means and to elevate their future safety over their present expedience. We do not enjoy a codified constitution in this country because the founding generation was fearful of General Washington or John Adams, but because it was fearful of men in the future whose names and characters they did not — and would not — know. That the Right has demonstrated a flair for consistent dissent has been a good and welcome thing. That it has looked beyond the immediate and ushered in a host of public officials whose guiding lights lie within the nation’s supreme law is even better.

#share#But now, the big question: How long can this trend last? Once upon a time, Obama himself was a great champion of the Constitution, while his opponents were dastardly cynics who would do anything in pursuit of a quick win. Alas, once he got into power, he dispensed with all that. Why? Because he was ultimately far more interested in power than in principle. A few admirable figures aside, it turned out that Obama’s acolytes were not really worried that George W. Bush was damaging the country’s established legal settlement. They were worried that he was winning. Will conservatives take the same road once Obama is gone?

The idea of Trump as a paladin of civil liberties should make one howl with terrible laughter.

Or, perhaps, before he is gone? Indeed, if the current Republican front-runner is any indication of things to come, large swathes of the party have already abandoned their talk of “constitutional conservatism” and “limited government” and embraced a flat-out authoritarianism, at least as preached by “The Donald.” Whatever else he might be, the idea of Trump as a paladin of civil liberties should make one howl with terrible laughter. Since he announced his candidacy, Trump has threatened to ignore those who are carping about free speech and shut down parts of the Internet; he has promised to summarily deport those who are suspected of being illegal immigrants, without due process of law; he has endorsed extensive campaign-finance regulations that fly directly in the face of the First Amendment; he has vowed to restrict the Second Amendment rights of those on the terror watch list, again without due process; he has praised Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, suggested that natural-born Americans can be deported against their will, and proposed that American Muslims be barred from reentering the country; he has described as “wonderful” a Supreme Court ruling that obliterated the “public use” limitations on the invocation of eminent domain; and he has refused to rule out registering Americans on the basis of their faith. Worse still, he has responded to the criticism that these positions have generated by channeling his inner Nancy Pelosi: “Are you serious?”

#related#And yet, despite all of these transgressions, 30 percent of GOP-primary voters still list him as their top pick. This is an unmitigated disgrace. For nearly a decade now, figures from all across the Right have been doing the vital intellectual spadework that is prerequisite to the Constitution’s revival. In the courts and in Congress, conservatives have made real progress in insisting that the law must sit at the center of our national political life. In the media, we have introduced “should we?” as the reliable bedfellow of “can we?” In the electorate writ large, activists and leaders have strived to ensure that “Is that constitutional?” is a litmus test for both policy and personnel. Who could have guessed that their efforts would be thrown to the curb the moment a cut-rate Roderick Spode began to bark and snarl at the fairgrounds?

Recommended Articles

Most Popular

To a certain kind of Rachel Maddow viewer, there are few more titillating preludes to a news segment than the one she delivered Monday: “If you have not seen it yet, you are going to want to sit down.”
Maddow’s story began, as many of her stories do, with President Trump, this time focused on his hotel ...
Read More

Federal prosecutors in Washington have recommended that criminal charges be filed against Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, and the Justice Department has rejected a last-ditch appeal by McCabe’s lawyers, according to a report on Thursday by Fox News. This clears the way for what appears to be ...
Read More

Early Monday morning, Donald Trump tweeted: “94% Approval Rating in the Republican Party, a record. Thank you!”
Where the president got this specific number remains a mystery. Recent polls by YouGov put his GOP approval roughly ten points lower, and Gallup, which has tracked Trump’s popularity since he ...
Read More

Making the click-through worthwhile: Why last night’s Democratic presidential primary debate was so bad; a suddenly hot issue that surprisingly never came up last night; an important and under-discussed detail about that Trump resort in Scotland; and a very important appointment for this weekend.
The ...
Read More

When John Bolton left his job as national security adviser -- President Trump says he fired him, Bolton says he quit -- the secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, weighed in. “The president’s view on the Iraq War and Ambassador Bolton’s was very different,” he said. Yes, they were very ...
Read More

If you haven’t read Politico’s lengthy investigative report on Jerry Falwell Jr.’s conduct as president of Liberty University, published earlier this week, I’d urge you to do so. It’s a sordid tale of the self-dealing, personal ambition, and extreme intolerance for dissent that’s long been an open ...
Read More

In a 2018 midterm election that didn’t give Republicans a lot to laugh about, one development that no doubt left them smiling was watching progressives across the country donate $80 million to Beto O’Rourke, in a Texas Senate race that was always going to be a steep uphill climb. Democratic party leaders can ...
Read More